1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid discharge apparatus.
2. Related Art
In an ink jet type line printer which is capable of printing in color, in order to prevent ink in a nozzle from thickening in a printing head, and to maintain good discharge performance, a flushing is performed whereby ink drops are discharged from the nozzle periodically as disclosed in JP-A-2010-105306. In such a flushing, a method is known, in which flushing is performed with the nozzle port of the printing head facing a cap, in a maintenance position away from the printing area.
However, for example, since a color ink is not used at the time of monochrome printing, the color ink thickens in the nozzle, and the discharge of the color ink becomes unreliable at the time of the color printing, thus there has been a case where the print quality deteriorates. In addition, in a case of flushing, since the cap is required to face the nozzle, the moving operation or opening and closing operation of each cap is necessary, and the control of the cap becomes complicated. In addition, since the flushing is performed by switching the cap, the required time for performing the flushing by switching the nozzle becomes long. Therefore, printing throughput deteriorates.